Free speech at youth sports games in small-town Kansas

5:27PM Dec 16, 2024

Speakers:

Keywords:

First Amendment

Quinter Kansas

Tim Clark

football coach

police report

Facebook post

city administrator

ban lifted

settlement

parental alienation

legal fees

custody battle

community conflict

retaliation case

public interest

Anna, you're listening to the Kansas reflector podcast. My name is Anna Kaminski, and today we're going to talk about a First Amendment issue in the small town of quinter. It's no more than 1000 people, and it boasts the motto, a feeling of home. I'm joined today by one man, Tim Clark, whose family made quinter their home and then had to fight to stay involved a conflict that began at his kids football game bloomed into a $75,000 settlement with the city in Mr. Clark's favor. I'm joined also today by his lawyer, Max couch. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us So, Tim, why don't you start by telling us a little bit about how this all transpired. Walk us through beginning to end.

Well, I I'm a divorced man, single father, and my children go to school there with her, with their mom, and they've enrolled in school. This is in 2021 or they had enrolled in school and sports in that community. And in the summer of 2021 I was holding some football camps, if you will, for anybody that wanted to show up just to get kids warmed up. My son likes to throw the ball, and I figured, you know, I work. I'm self employed, so why not go have these camps? Anybody can come and give him somebody to throw the ball to and keep kids active. And during that time, I think other people had noticed, and the sports director, Daryl hopless, had reached out to me directly and asked if I would like to be a little league football coach for flag football. And of course, that sounded like fun, because I love football, and I would be coaching my own kids team. And I thought that's what a cool opportunity, you know, and I didn't know the community at all. So I said, Yes. Didn't think about it. I didn't ask for references. Maybe I should have, but I took the position and I trained the kids over the summer. Got to know all the parents. Everything seemed really great. Game One came to be, you know, fast forwarding to September, or whenever the first game was. We were playing in a town called Hill City, Kansas, which is north of there about 45 minutes. And it's a known rival team for the high schools, and logistically, it's the next best place to play if we're going to play neighboring towns. So we're playing a double header in that town as my first game coaching. I'd never coached anything in my life, and the first game Hill city just absolutely steamrolled us. My inexperience showed through, and I just getting absolutely steamrolled. And there was one kid on the sideline that I had seen in practice, it wasn't handling any kind of failure well, and I didn't want to play this kid in that game because, like, I wanted to run away. I couldn't even imagine putting this kid in. And the way that I thought, even though I've never coached, is that I don't want him to come in and play, get steam rolled, and never want never want to play again. So I just didn't play him, because I wasn't prepared to even play the players that I had that were tough, you know, mentally and I didn't feel like this kid was there yet. During the game, my ex wife had walked up to me and said, You need to play this kid. And I explained to her, it was during the game. I explained to her, please get off the field. I'll handle it. He's gonna play, just not right now, fast forward to the second game starting. She was sitting with another woman. I ran over to the parent of the child who was crying, and I said, Hey, I'm sorry about the first game. And she immediately cut me off and began to tell me why I should listen to her. She's a teacher, and she does all these things, and I'm like, Look, I I'm a volunteer. I respect the ear teacher, but I'm a volunteer here. I don't really want to get lectured right now. Is he playing enough in this game? This was the second game, and he was playing a lot. He's having an excellent game. In fact, I still think it was probably the best game of his career. And she continued to harp on me, in front of my ex wife, in front of my kids, my daughter was sitting right there, and I just decided to back away, because there was a game in progress, and I thought everything was okay. At that point, deep into the first half, I saw her pacing at the end zone on the phone, talking to somebody. Okay. Well, maybe not. You know, that ended up turning into a phone call that came three days later from the Director of Sports in the community of corner named Daryl hovless, who really didn't give me any chance to even explain myself. That I can recall. That may not be accurate, but I don't recall ever having a way to say my side of the story. They just relinquished me from being a coach at that point. This is 2021 so that was my initial experience and coaching, and I if that's the way coaching is, I never want to do it again, just trying to protect kids. And it backfired, and I ended up losing my job as a coach. Now, I later found out that there was a police supposedly, a police report filed, and all these things against me, and there's accusations or allegations of me standing over her, or whatever she ended up saying. And for several years, I believe that that was actually existing. I just figured they never charged me. After a while, I decided I'm going to go to Hill City and I'm going to ask these people, what do you have on me? Because in my mind, I'm imagining there's an inbox for police reports, and there's the the BS ones, and there's the high priority ones. Well, that's not the case. It's not the way that I understood it is, if there's a police report, they contact you, they question you, and they either get rid of it, even if you're not charged and there's a report, it goes on your KBI. So I pulled my KBI. I have nothing. I don't have a speeding ticket. So that was frustrating. And at that point, I got online and I said some things about this person. I'm not gonna say her name, just to not be inflammatory. And that was on Facebook, right, correct. I put a video out there on Facebook saying, hey, you know this police report that this person keeps saying is out there is actually inaccurate. I have no police report. And, you know, trying to vilify myself, not vilify myself, but to vindicate myself from these, these rumors, and even I believed them right about myself, that there was something out there, and whether or not it was valid, a different story. But I really wanted to know what it said. Turns out, it's a phantom report. It was all a lie. I talked to the Hill city police. The guy that actually did the report, he said he never even did a report. He got the phone call. He called his people that were on the ground. They determined that there was never an issue at all, and they just blew it off. That was the truth. And the story was that I'm some sort of a villain, and it snowballed from there into whatever it is now. And I don't even think I want to know fully what they're what these people say about me, because the things I do know are bad enough

bring me to October of this year. So between

now and then I had played or had gone to some sports games in corner they they had banned me from being a coach. Of course, in 2021 in 2022 we went to a game, actually an entire season of football games. Now my kids are playing. I believe it was the beginning of tackle football. In fact, yes, it was tackle football. Five games went by and my son didn't take one snap, and I was sitting there patiently and just watching, and just like, sooner or later, they're going to give a kid a chance. Now it's a fourth to sixth grade League, and there's kids that are two years older, that are far beyond his skill set and him physically. So I understand to a certain degree, but the kid's also a big kid, and he's also athletic. So like, why isn't he playing when we're up 43 to nothing, at least a snap. Just give the kids something. And five games went by, and this person, who you know from the year before, their son, didn't play for five games. But they were real quiet. They didn't say anything. I get chewed on for one game. Five games goes by with this new coaching regime, and nobody says a word. So I finally stand up and I say, I put a Facebook post together, and this is the Facebook post that they hang their hat on. And it basically said, in a nutshell, that, what would you do if you had four coaches with five starters on a team of eight that are starting these five kids and the other eight kids don't even get to play football? Do you feel like it's government money being well spent? Do you feel like your kids are getting value out of this? Or do you feel like they're you feel like they're just target practice for the other kids? And you know, a warm body to beat up in practice, is what I felt happened to my son. I didn't say any names. It's all verified. It's all out there. I didn't say the name of the town. I didn't say the name of anybody. I just made some questions, and I'll have to do that. One of their coaches wrote me that night and said, Nice Facebook post. I'm like. It's all true, you know, and that's I never talked to him again. He in front of me on Facebook. He didn't like that. He was being, you know, called out, but I didn't ever say his name. The next day or two, I got a notice from Daryl hovla saying that there was going to be a coaches and parents meeting about football, and it kind of felt weird with the timing, that maybe it could have been potentially partially about me. But I was like, season's over. You know, what am I? I knew that the coaches that were there were moving on to junior high at the time, and I thought, well, what am I going to go say they're already the structures are already changing. I'm just going to stay home. Well, I stayed home, and I didn't later find out that that meeting was about me, and I got a phone call from Greg Thomas, saying, Mr. Clark, you left me a voicemail. You we just had a meeting. We decided that you've been banned for life. And I'm listening to this message. I'm like, can you tell us who Greg Thomas is? Greg Thomas was their city administrator at the time, and he's and I didn't even know who he was, but he knew who I was, right? So he said that you've been banned from life, or for life, from home and away games and my voicemail. And I'm sitting here thinking, This can't be real. This has got to be a prank, like, where's Ashton Kutcher? It? You know, it is what I said it was, and it's all and it's all there, it's all verifiable. So I left it alone, and I sat there for a minute. I thought, I need this on letterhead. And as hot headed as he sounded, his voice was kind of trembling in the voice memo, and maybe I'll get this guy to put it on letterhead. I called him back and I said, Can you just put it on letterhead? I'd like to see this officially. So he obliged. He sent me a letter on city of corner letterhead, stating that I was banned, just as I stated, and and then at that point, I just was in a state of disbelief, and I sat back and kind of tried to digest it and wondering, you know, did I do something that I didn't realize I'd done was, you know, all the things you go through, like how lifetime bans is pretty harsh for something like this, right, especially when your kids are. Involved, right? Yeah, absolutely. So we went to a city council meeting. Shortly thereafter, there was one championship game that happened, and there's some details in that that I think may be worth bringing up, between the band and the championship game, their coach's wife, who was like the team lead, she told us, sent out all the invitations for where to go to the games. And at this instance, it was about a football party for congratulations to go into the championship. She excluded my son from that and he was on that team, and said that he basically he didn't get the invitation. I got it from a friend that was on the team. There was a pizza party for the championship pregame, and my son wasn't invited to it. I called the neighboring community, wakini, and said, what had happened. And I said, I want to come tape, bring my son. Well, I'm a single dad, and there were my kids. I had him that week. Can I bring him to the game? The guy's on the phone is like, yeah, sure, no problem. They can't. They can't enforce this stuff. Or another town or another county. 30 minutes later, I get a phone call from wakini. Oh, we just talked to them, and we don't want you here. I'm like, based on what? And he starts to treat me like I'm some sort of a second class citizen. I said, Look, man, all I did was a Facebook post. It's literally all I did. And he goes, it doesn't matter if you bring your son to the championship game, there'll be police presence. So having my kids, and at the time it was my daughter's was six and my son was nine, I'm not going to show up somewhere on a Saturday where I might get arrested and my kids are gonna go where, right? I didn't even know where my ex wife was at the time, but I don't want to go to jail. I've never been to jail, and I don't want to start now. So I asked my son, I said, Do you want to go? I can drop you off and I'll leave. I You earned it. And he said, No, Dad, I don't even want to go without you. And I tried to get him to go. He didn't want to go, so we just canceled the whole thing and didn't go at all. It was something that he'll probably never forget. And then, of course, Monday comes and he's got his classmates making fun of him. Oh, your dad got banned. It's his fault. And like these, these parents were leaking into their children, and now he's catching crap and eats. Just felt bad enough he couldn't even be there for the pizza party, let alone the championship. Um, coincidentally, that team lost. They got steamrolled by wakini. And I can't say that I was pleased for the children, but the coaches, well, you know, it's the way it goes.

So Max, tell me about where you come into all this.

Well, Tim gave me a call because he was concerned about about all the issues that that he's mentioned here. You know primarily that this, this whole idea of of banning him without any articulated reason. You know, there's a Supreme Court talks about undifferentiated fear, you know, fear that cannot be identified. And the Supreme Court always says in the First Amendment context that undifferentiated fear is not enough for the government to be able to make adverse decisions about somebody's speech. You know, just because you fear someone or find them offensive, that doesn't mean that you get to take state action against them. And so when Tim shared with me the Facebook post and and was really unable to to tell me any other reason why he would be banned. You know, I really started to think that he was being punished strictly for his speech, and that the state was the one that was doing that. And, and so, so, so the initial, so the initial part of of my representation was, was just to try to wake them up to the fact that the that banning him for life over this was was a violation of his constitutional rights. And so that first salvo then generated the the band, the rescission of the ban. And so his the band was rescinded against him on the 27th of September of 2024 so that means that for almost two years it was, it was in effect and and so, so that was validating that the that the city decided to lift the ban and and certainly gave me some hope that there could be a way to resolve this favorably for Tim. So so that was that I will, I will, however, say that none of, none of that mattered as much as the evidence that Tim was able to produce. And the reason why his, I believe, why his case was successful is because he made a recording of him of where he and his daughter were sitting outside of practice at his son's practice. And this would have been on October 20 of 2022 which coincidentally not happens to be his son's birthday. And so on his son's birthday, son is at at practice. Now this would, this would be the day before Tim's son was excluded from the pizza party. So, so the invite to the pizza party to which his son was denied access happened on Friday that would have been october 21 of 2022 and this incident that I'm talking about happened to. Day before, and this incident that happened on October 20 of 2022 is the entirety of the case, in my opinion, in terms of the reason why a settlement was able to be leveraged, because the recording that Tim made is, is nothing short of remarkable, you know, and not and it's remarkable for many reasons, one of which is, is that these actors knew that they were being recorded. It's not like Tim was was serendipitously recording anybody. That was not what was happening, what was happening, what was happening is that this so Daryl have less had identified. Had seen Tim approaching the practice with his son, right, and he had dropped his son off, and he was there with his daughter, and he's in the parking lot adjacent to the to the practice and and somehow this isn't good enough for this person. And this person believes, believed that, because of the ban, she was then authorized to to call law enforcement and have Tim removed from the premises of the quinner high school campus. And so what, what transpired in that encounter, in my opinion, is the reason why the case is what was so strong, because they're the the city administrator. He's the one who talks the most, but it's also, it's city administrator, Greg Thomas, but there's also the mayor, Jeremy Blackwell. Jeremy Blackwell is still the mayor. And then the third person involved was the deputy sheriff from the grove County Sheriff's Department. So, you know, these city actors called law enforcement to physically remove Tim based on the ban letter that they had written that facially violated the First Amendment. And so this recording is just a, I mean, it is a treasure trove of liability. We have the the what I peppered the complaint throughout with one of the, what I thought was one of the most important quotes, which was that the city administrator labeled Tim quote, the community is problem. And so, you know, it is not up to the government to to label members of the community as a problem. That is that obviously shows bias. It shows that there is not a rational basis. It shows that, you know, that any of the decision making is, is, is not tightly related to actually furthering the public good. It has much more to do with retaliating against against him.

Can I interrupt really quick? Tim, I'm curious, what was that like for you, being labeled the quote, unquote community's problem?

It was overwhelming. I mean, to hear somebody I don't know to say that to me after simply just doing what I've told you that I did. I mean, it was, it was, and then having police show up with with the city administrator telling me that, and he's standing over me with my six year old daughter. I'm sitting on the ground doing sight words with my daughter, and we're like, get got hot, hit that kind of stuff. We're not even watching the football practice. They're 200 yards away from us. Anyway. I don't have a spotting scope or binoculars. I'm working with my with my girl. I don't live there as though I'm waiting for practice to end so we can all go home, so to have them come up and say something like that. Like, well, I felt like there was something more like, well, what on earth are you guys so afraid of? Man, I just made a comment. Had nothing to do with any coaches. I didn't say any name of even the town I should have, because I got punished as such, but I didn't. I didn't want to throw them under the bus. Nor do I want people that I don't know knowing, you know where I'm at at the exact time, where my kids are. They were very little at the time. So, yeah, it's overwhelming. It was disheartening. It was it was all the things you could possibly feel, and emotions I don't think I've ever felt before, especially because these three men were standing behind me, one of them's got a gun. You know, I'm unarmed with my with my daughter, and they're threatening to arrest me, and I'm thinking, well, they arrest me. Where are my kids gonna go? Like, you know, when I'm when I have my kids, I consider me alone. Maybe I could have called my ex and she was right down the road. Maybe she was in California, I don't know, but I'm sitting here all these thoughts are going through my head. What are we gonna do? I want to escape one and two. I want to stand my ground and be a man, because I don't want my kids growing up looking back saying, Oh, dad used to bow down to the city government of quinter Kansas, of, I'm sorry to make fun, but we're not talking about Washington, DC here, or even Topeka politicians. We're talking about quinter Kansas, and these people you know this, this woman like Max said, had the wherewithal to get on her phone and have me removed with their single cop. They had and he didn't even show up. They had to call the county sheriff. But the fact that they showed up, I was I was scared. I was little nervous.

To that point Max. It is, in a way, small town politics. But why is it important to draw this out? Why is it important to see this. As compelling and protect speech in the way that you two did well,

because you can't have the government conspiring with private actors to to suppress speech. The the the touchstone for a retaliation case is whether or not a person's speech is protected, and then whether or not they face an adverse result from the government as a result of that speech. And so it was so, what it comes down to, more than anything else, I think, is that there, there needed to be a reminder, you know, a shot across the bow. You know, to the to, you know, to this notion. You know, you suggested, you know, maybe these sort of political things happen a lot in small towns. Well, there's a limit to that, you know, certainly in a society, you know members of society, you know a community, a neighborhood, a school. This is why we have cliques, you know, I mean, people can ostracize other people, right? And that's and that's society, and that's the way it goes, and is it's fair, or whatever. It doesn't matter, because that's the way it is. That's humans. What I think is the problem. The problem comes from when those same humans become members of the government and then and then employ these same sort of, you know, social ostrich ostracization tactics from their position of power within the government. And I think that's really what happened here. We have, we just have a complete disconnect between what you can do as a person and then what you are obligated to do and what your duties are as a government official. And I just think that these people here completely they got bought in to whatever rumors there are about Tim to whatever and the conclusions that they drew, you know, caused them to act unreasonably and and so to me, you know, I'm just so I'm looking at the evidence, you know, and I just can't come to any other conclusion. Then this was wrong, you know, there was, this was protected speech. I mean, I remember the first one of the I mean, the first thing that I did, I feel like, when Tim called me, is like, Okay, well, let's, let's take a close look at this Facebook post, you know, because there is a why, you know, not. Certainly, there's a presumption under the First Amendment that speech is protected, and you have to find reasons for it not to be protected. However, there are these exceptions for protected speech, and so of course, that was my concern, you know, is that there's going to be something here that's going to make this case weak, because, because what he said could be arguably unprotected. But of course, lo and behold, I read the Facebook post, and it is undeniably protected speech. I mean, undeniably, you know, we're not dealing with any curse words, you know, and when it comes to retaliation case, the plaintiff in a retaliation case generally doesn't even have to prove that what they said is in the public interest. They just have to prove that it's protected. But not only was what Tim said protected, it was in the public interest, because we're talking about the way that the football program is administered and the way that you know, that it's taxpayer dollars, in the sense of these registration fees, you know, what is the, how are the, how are, how is the money being used? Because this is through the public parks and recreation, that's, that's right, that's right, and that's, and that's why it became a First Amendment problem. You know, if this is some sort of private club, well, that's different. You know, another thing that's really, I thought, extremely striking about this is this meeting that they called that Tim didn't go to. That meeting was at City Hall. It was at City Hall. I mean that the you know, you just have the indicia of state action at this point, you have a meeting that is called by an administrator, a decision maker, and it's being held at City Hall, you know, so at the so what, you know, I It's like a Salem witch trial, you know, you you are in a situation where there's a where the public, the public opinion, is fomented, you know, by actors and and again, if it's private actors, well, that's Life, but it can't be the members of the government who are organizing an effective witch trial against a member of the community when that member of the community has engaged in protected speech.

So walk me through to the settlement. How did this get resolved? And I'd love to hear from both of you the process, but also Tim, kind of the impact of the settlement and what it means to you to receive this acknowledgement of the situation.

I mean to fast forward to the actual settlement getting in hand. It felt I felt vindicated myself. I thought that maybe people would be objective enough to look at it and go, Oh, maybe this guy was set up. Maybe there were some rumors that we shouldn't have believed, and all those things felt like they were going to happen. I certainly feel better about it now, because I have the legal fees to to chase now and also get caught up with my business, because this has set me back in a lot of ways. You know, I had, I had a lot of things going on in my life, to where I got behind. Mind on my business, and this has helped me get caught up with that. It's also helped me get armed with money to be able to fight my legal battles and my custody case that I'm in which just so happens to be going on in that same town, and not to get into that. But I thought that the air would be cleared. I thought people would say, okay, they paid 75 grand. These people know they did something wrong. Maybe they all misheard. And they would, they would back up. Well, I thought wrong about, I don't know, a week or two later, I went to my son and daughters parent teacher conferences for their midterms and or whatever it was, you know, middle of the semester, and the principal walked me to my teachers classes and sat into my interviews with me, and I'm like, why are you here? You know? And he said, Well, you know, he had, I don't remember enough to even paraphrase, but he had some answer that didn't make any sense. And the teachers are sitting there with their arms crossed, you know, the closed down body language. And I'd talk, and she'd go, like this, and I'm like, What is going on in here? You know, the same stuff. I don't know what they're making up now. I feel like they're making up more things like the demonization or the vilification of my my character in that town, it's like their priority, at least, I don't think it's their top priority, but they want me gone. And even after the settlement, which screams it was wrongdoing, they don't just hand out $75,000 checks without unfiled court docs. Do they like? That doesn't happen, or it would happen all the time, right? There's obviously some wrong, some wrong doing in this whole thing, but nobody paid attention, even my closest friends in that town. I mean, I guess a few of them wrote me, but there's some people that I know in that town, that I know very well, that never said, Congratulations. They never said, Oh, good job. They know I've been through hell. I mean, my kids went from being full time with me. I'm not saying that this is related, but it's close. And I went from having full custody of my kids into a custody battle and then having primary custody go to my ex wife. That's another story, but it's another segment of the story. But that just started happening right towards the very end. They weren't endorsing this band for about a year and a half. They said nothing of it. I went to games in town. I was sitting by Daryl hovless. I'd walked by her husband. I said hi to him, my daughter was there. I watched her scoff when I pulled up, but they never said a word the minute that my ex wife won primary custody. Well, a month later, they were enrolled in school there, and then they enrolled in football there. My son had a jersey that was a little big forum two years before, when he played for the town, when he didn't play for five games, and his mom had ordered him a jersey, meaning, well, and it was the wrong size. She got an adult size. So I called the city and I said, Hey, I've got a jersey for quinner Number seven. Can he wear that number? Does anybody else have it? Because I'm having to order another Jersey now. And this, this Eric Rucker character, answered the phone. I never talked to him. Don't know who he is. And he said, let me check and see well, he said, I should be fine, though there's nobody playing number seven. About 10 minutes later, the phone rings and it's him, and I could tell on the tone, Mr. Clark. He called me Mr. Clark. And I'm thinking, oh boy. You know these are people. Don't call you Mr. Clark unless there's a problem. He goes, Ah, you're banned from coming to the events here. And I said, Excuse me. He goes, Yeah, you're not allowed to come to events here. And I said, I've been coming to events there for a year and a half. I mean, I went to a city council meeting with my kids and asked them to lift it. They said they'd call me. They never called me. So I started going to games and see what would happen, because those weekends, I had the flexibility to, you know, find out, if you will, and nobody ever said a word. And then they call me on the phone and tell me that. So I said, Call me back with Daryl on speaker phone. So he does, and I hear Daryl in the background, and she said, Yeah, you're banned. I said, Daryl, I've been coming to games for a year and a half. She goes, I haven't seen you. I have this recorded. I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact words, but I have this recorded. She says, I haven't seen you at the events. I said, Daryl, yes, you have I pulled up on you last month. She lives 100 yards away from the baseball field, as does my ex wife, their neighbors just, you know, coincidentally and and I said, You scoffed when I pulled up. I sat behind you. I said hi to your husband, my daughter walked by you a dozen times. I know you saw me there, and I know you see me at soccer, baseball, football, all of them you know, on on opposing sides, on our sidelines in this town and out of this town. And she said, Well, you're banned now. You can't come back to the games. And I'll tell you, I just lost custody of my kids down to four days a month, and I was already crushed from that. And I don't have any convictions. I don't even have charges. I've not even been questioned for child abuse, nothing. I don't have a speeding ticket. Like all of this doesn't make any sense. I'm still digesting that whole thing. I mean, my heart's been tore out of my freaking chest. They're all that matters to me, really in this world. And then now, all of a sudden, I can't go to their I'm the dad that goes to practices. I go to every game. I show up early, I sit and watch the warm ups. I'm involved. They're my life. I'm their life. We have a beautiful relationship. And now you're telling me I can't even go to a game without being arrested. And I'll tell you, man, when I found that out, I was driving home, and I have never felt so dark in my life, like, not dark, like I'm gonna do something crazy, but I had thoughts going through my head that I've never had before. I felt completely hopeless, and I got home, somehow, got home, and I shouldn't say it, that. Way, but I was just was I was just destroyed, completely destroyed. This is actually after the city council meeting. I went to another one to ask if they lift the van, and they said no, and they cross their arms and they slam the gavel and said, Get out. Basically, that was after that on my way home that I realized that I was really buried. And I got home, and I don't really remember much about the night, but the next day, and not because I'm sober. It wasn't because I got home and got trashed. I sure thought about it, but I didn't want to throw my sobriety away over it. And the next day, I got up and I was sitting in my living room, and I was like, going through some some files from my old lawyer about this, and I just happened to open one of dozens. And this is, this is the divine intervention that your readers or your listeners may or may not want to hear. But to me, this is divine intervention. I'm hopeless, and I'm just going through these emails trying to find a strut of light. And I see one from my old lawyer, and it said freedom of speech and the winner thing. And I just clicked that one out of all the ones I could have opened, and it was the least of my worries, because I want my kids back, not that and I see you may want to try Max couch or the ACLU. And I'm like, yeah, these probably aren't very hot leads if ACLU is one of them, right, because you can have red tape. So I decided to call max and why not? And also said you have till October 10 to file these. Are you going to lose out on the statute of limitations? And it's like August or September? I'm like, Okay, well, I'll just call max. This man answered the phone on one ring, and I didn't know who he was, and he didn't know who I was, but he answered on one ring, and I told him about a minute and a half of the story, and he said, basically what you just said, you know, is, if this is really true, this is a slam dunk. What else is going on? I'm like, there's really nothing else. This is literally it. And they punished me to this level, and then they just carried on from there.

And this is obviously a very a personal, personal matter. It affects your life. It affects your kids. But Max, from your perspective, with that, with that personal element, how also, is it relatable? How does this, this first amendment issue, kind of percolate down into the lives of of everyone in Kansas, everyone in the country all united under this, this, this, right? Well,

yeah, I mean the way that the, I mean the government. I mean that the reason why the retaliation standard in the and that line of cases has been established is to make it so that, you know, we are safe in our homes from, you know, from actors who are biased or influenced by by things that they shouldn't be, you know, things that are not in the public interest. You know, we have our goal, you know, as as, as a democracy, you know, should be to elect and to have appointed folks who are going to promote the public interest. You know, unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. And so then the key is to have these legal mechanisms to be useful in that moment, and so and so. You know, again, when it comes to when you're looking at the legal standards and applying those legal standards to Tim's case, I mean, it's a it's just a really strong case, the but the thing of the thing that made his case so good, though, is this personal aspect. Because it is one thing to be able to say, okay, the First Amendment is violated, and and my rights have been violated. And you know, this is, this amounts to, this amounts to a technical violation of the First Amendment. And you know, I'm entitled to damages as a result. You know, well, those cases, I'm, I'm, I mean, I hesitate, I I don't think I should generalize necessarily, but I will just say that Tim's case is not like that. The reason why I was motivated to take Tim's case, sure, the First Amendment aspect, was why it was in the wheelhouse. That's why I took it, ultimately, to argue that case and litigate that line of of the law, that area of law, sure, but why take Tim's case and not other cases where there is a First Amendment issue? It's because of the the the parental alienation aspect. I mean, the this is a man who is, who is being treated incredibly unfairly and and the reason why I got into law in the first place is because I have this real this fairness thing. I want things to be fair, and that's why I, you know, I take issue with what the government does and the way I write and speak out about access to public records, and especially police records, because I feel like there's a inherent unfairness that comes along when the decision makers, you know, inherently have more may have more power. They have more clout. And that's exactly what happened to Tim. You have these decision makers who have power in the community, and they have the relationships because they are also just people in that community, and then the line blurs between them, you know, using, you know, whatever social constructs are available, you know, versus oh well, we're gonna actually carry out this retaliation against this member of the community, and that's what can happen. We have to have a separation between the personal and the official. And when, when those lines get blurred, then that is how unfairness happens and and. And, and the unfairness in this case was really stark because it had to do with his ability to have it as a parent with a, you know, beautiful relationship with his children, to have that be attacked and and and minimized, you know, by state actors. I mean, it's one thing, if a judge enters an order in a domestic case, you know? I mean, who knows what happens in domestic cases? I mean, you know that there's a reason why the court of law, you know you're gonna, you have to, you know, there's, there's rules for evidence is introduced and, and, and what can be considered in all of that. And so, you know, if something goes away in the in a court proceeding. Well, then you appeal it, and you can fight, and you do other things about it, but, but that's, you know, that kind of is what it is. And in a sense, that is not the way it is when you've got these other actors who are not involved in any sort of court proceeding, and then somehow think that, you know, it's their obligation, duty, right, justification to to to somehow extend this retaliation against Tim and and so it's this, it's this inherent unfairness that was personified in his inability to have to continue to pursue his relationship with his kids. It really, just, it just really got me and and so yes, the First Amendment aspect, of course, is why the case was winner, but it's not just the law that makes cases, it's the facts that make cases and and I really sympathize with Tim, and I know a jury would have and that's why they had to pay. Thank

you both very much for sharing your stories with me today. I really appreciate

it. Thanks for having us. Applause.